by Rosli Mansor
The Taiping Municipal Council (MPT) successfully won the Best Recreational Destination Award at the 2022 Malaysian Tourism Industry Awards which took place at the Royal Chulan Hotel Kuala Lumpur, last Friday.
According to its chairman, Khairul Amir Mohamad Zubir, the success was driven by MPT’s continuous efforts in providing and promoting recreational locations for leisure activities such as Taiping Lake Park, Perak Botanic Park, Taiping Zoo & Night Safari (ZTNS) and Bukit Larut Resort.
“The inaugural award also gave the highest honour to individuals and organisations who contributed and played an important role in the success of the tourism industry.
“Congratulations and well done to all the parties involved in receiving this award,” he said while opening the ICare Pharmacy Charity Run 2022 programme, at Pavillion Zoo on Sunday.
Khairul Amir said that the recognition was also supported by the presence of 866,879 ZTNS visitors.
It covered 761,420 visitors in the morning session which was for Taiping Zoo and 105,459 visitors in the evening session which was for Night Safari from the beginning of the year until 16 December.
“This integrated programme involves collaboration between government agencies, the private sector and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
“Organisations in 2020 and 2021 had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” he added.
He explained that MPT through ZTNS has collaborated with ICare Pharmacy to hold the Save Malaysia Tigers Campaign through the ICare Pharmacy Charity Run 2022 event.
He said the running programme had attracted the interest of nearly 1,500 local and foreign runners.
He said, the main goal is to increase community awareness of efforts to conserve the existence of this endangered species, in addition to raising funds to help the Malayan Tiger conservation efforts in ZTNS.
